


You can't carry it with you if you want to survive

by honeybadgerwrath



Series: Hardest of Hearts [2]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Complete, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Alternating, Post-Movie(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-19 01:03:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4726925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybadgerwrath/pseuds/honeybadgerwrath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt at the <a href="http://kinkfromuncle.dreamwidth.org/640.html?thread=273024">Man From UNCLE kinkmeme</a>:</p><p>  <i>Gaby apologizes in the movie for betraying Illya and almost getting him caught, but doesn't do the same to Napoleon, who actually did get caught and tortured. I'd like something addressing this. His injuries catch up to him?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation of Hardest of Hearts, but you don't necessarily have to read that one to continue on from here.

Her fingers shake when they interlace with his, but there is nothing of fear in her as she watches him with large, worried eyes. Not fear for herself, in any case, although she knows the emotion enough to recognize its bloom in her chest along with the heavy weight of her own guilt, her own grief.

His eyes are more wild than not when he looks up at her, his struggles ceasing at the feel of her hand over his. How much of what is happening he can understand, she does not know, the black of his pupils were blown too wide for her to imagine there was not more to the situation she cannot immediate see. For her to imagine that were she to turn his forearm in her hands she would find anything but the angry red marks of a needle's work on the inside of his elbow.

Still, she shushes him, allows him to tighten his grip on her fingers until the action hurts, his knuckles white in the desperate scrabble to hold onto her as he stares up at her, throat exposed by the sharp angle of his tilted jaw. With her hand that is free of his grip she fumbles for the latch at his throat and, once the worn leather has finally slipped free beneath her too clumsy fingers, tosses the metal contraption aside. She replaces it with her hand, splaying her fingers out across his jaw and cheek in a caress that is as worried and careful as her eyes.

She feels the weight of Illya's eyes on her as he looks up from his work at her side, but cannot then bear to look away from the too-sharp, too wild expression their partner wears in looking at her.

Whatever pumps through his blood is not entirely to blame, she can see it there for herself. Memory works too to leave the bitter edge of panic to every one of his movements, to add a strain in his voice when he murmurs her name around the swollen, dry state of his mouth. She would give him a drink of water in a heartbeat if not for the need to pull away to do so, so stays where she is and tries to infuse reassurance in the broken note she hums in an attempt to settle him. All she wishes to say stays lodged in her throat with the knowledge that they must not be overheard. That they must stay quiet if they are to escape.

The acrid smell of smoke and copper and blood is an affront to every breath and still she keeps her breaths shallow and even as she pushes back the rise of bile in her throat at the thought of what has been done to him. This time, the time before. The monstrosity she unleashed on him once.

It is only later when she sits with her back against the side of the car, his weight heavy and lax where he has half collapsed across her and her fingers card through his hair in an attempt to soothe away the nightmares she knows are to come, that she breathes her apologies. To the stifling air within the car. To the man who sits in the seat in front of her and whitens his knuckles around the steering wheel. Against the temple of the man who had not already heard her regret and deserved so much better than the words she struggles to get out for the memories she and the man who was her mother's brother have burned into him.

A hundred years and she might never absolve herself of that weight, but it is not for herself that she repeats the words again and again, her lips pressing tight against the temple of the man who breathes too raggedly in her arms.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time he wakes it is to complete and utter darkness.

The world has not yet resolved itself into details he can understand with a mind in chaos, half-drugged and too-sharp in its instincts. He remembers only the agony of before. The electro-jump of lightning along his nerves and every muscle in his body seizing in unison. Of ferocity and terror of being thrown back what is at once ages and no time at all. Into another chair with the splash of water around his ankles and the burnburnburn of everything he knows.

He has caught his fingers around a wrist before he can so much as think. The sound of his own heartbeat is loud and unsteady in his ears as he grips at the delicate bones he finds in his hand, aware of nothing so much as the feel of them grinding together. He can almost hear them creak under the force of his grip and is reassured by the knowledge that he can snap the two bones – _radius and ulna_ , his mind supplies – with ease.

It's the sound of her gasp that makes him pause. Makes him reel back somewhere close to himself. Such a small sound and yet he freezes at its slicing through the staccato drumbeat of his heart.

_“You are hurting me.”_

He does yet let go of the wrist he holds, but at the sound of German spoken aloud he blinks. Once, twice, then again, until two faces above him come into focus. He knows them. He does. Doesn't he? They're on either side of them, which would have to mean he's on his back, although a quick measure of the shoulders of the male half of the pair suggests that he might have to look up at that one's face in any situation. That could be wrong. He's not quite sure.

 _“Solo,”_ there's that voice again, and he turns to track it back to the face of the woman who hovers over him. Elfin, pretty. In pain. His mind stutters over that last one, confusion rolling through him as he stares up at her, then looks to the tightly-drawn face of the man on his other side, then back at the woman. Strange, women didn't usually look at him like that. He should know, he's-

He's crushing her wrist in his hand.

He releases his grip as if the touch burns him, something wild and panicked rising in his chest as he tries and fails to reconcile his action with memory.

He does not have the time to watch her pull her wrist in against her chest to cradle it protectively, or even to note how ferocity and concern are twined together in the face of the other man. Later he's grateful they catch his shoulders when he jerks himself upright and twists, the hands on him careful as they allow him to turn to his side to vomit. More careful still as they ease him back onto his back.

Darkness closes in on him once again, but not before he registers the odd sensation of a calloused touch brushing across his forehead and over his hair. He thinks he hears his name, but he is unconscious before he can say for sure.


	3. Chapter 3

It is not the second time that he wakes that he remembers. No, not even the third. It is instead the fourth time that he wakes that memory begins to slip in alongside consciousness to assure that he might just remember what happens after in moments other than those spent in dreams. Or in nightmares.

His stomach still roils, a slow pitch and heave that would seem better suited to a boat than to what appears to be a solid brick and mortar building around him, but he does not have the immediate urge to vomit. Oh, it's there like a hum in the back of his mind that he might just need to, but he does not feel the urge yet to roll onto his side and empty his stomach once again.

Once again?

He stops, puzzled, on the thought that runs discordant to the rest of them. When had he vomited before? He cannot remember. The not remembering fits uneasy over him as he finally recognizes that the utter darkness that surrounds him is not an absence of light but only proof that his eyes are still closed.

He opens them to blink blearily out at the world as it is around him. The surety in his bones of brick and mortar is proven true, although he cannot say where exactly it is that he is other than that the room around him is a degree of shabby he recognizes all too well from his younger days. Not that it is. It is not his family home or any place he has stayed before, as far as he remembers, it simply echoes those places in the thinness of the sheets and the clean, but threadbare appearance of its interior.

However little he has stirred in the slow check of all his limbs, counting all his fingers and toes in what has become a familiar ritual after having lost consciousness, the shuffle of the sheets around him have inspired a movement he's only aware of once it comes into his immediate field of vision. Somehow, he thinks, moving his head against what he's gradually coming to realize is one hell of a throbbing headache might just set off the threat of nausea he noted before.

The faces that move into view are drawn and exhausted, but no less naked in their shows of relief when he looks between them with steady eyes.

“Hello again,” he tries not to wince at the strained sound of his own voice when he speaks. It thoroughly destroys his attempt at levity but damned if he'll give it up just yet. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Peril, he notes, grumbles something with a huff before trading a look at the woman sitting at Solo's other side. There's a note of fondness in it, he is not too tired to recognize, even when his partners look as if they had been wrung through the same wringer he had. Or, at the very least, wrung through one with similarly destructive tendencies.

Gaby, for her part, looks for a moment as if she might cry in the sheer relief of it all and where Solo might take some pleasure at playing the part of the doomed prince who inspires women to fall to tears on his behalf, she is no swooning maiden and he thinks he might just feel altogether comfortably broken if she were to start crying over him then. Luckily for them both, she presses her lips together and where her eyes still carry a hint of wetness to them, she steadies herself out on her own.

“Illya, get him some water,” she says, reaching for something outside of his immediate field of vision and (just when his eyebrows are ready to creep up on his forehead in curiosity) comes up with a stethoscope. He's ready to ask where she's managed to find such a thing before he's stilled into silence as she hooks it into her ears and moves to listen to his heart with an edge of practice he finds, frankly, a little unsettling. Mechanics did not, after all, usually have to listen to heartbeats with medical tools. And, really, he's got enough to focus on what with not flinching at the cold feel of the chestpiece of the device when it is pressed at a spot over his heart, and trying to piece together the too-large gaps in his memory as she listens.

A knot loosens in his chest when the tight mask of her expression fades into one again of relief and she removes the stethoscope to set it aside. He didn't think he would've minded if she had kept her fingers splayed over his ribs, but before he can assure her of that fact there's the matter of being helped up into a position propped up on the bed and a bank of pillows with the solidness of Peril's grip taking altogether too much of his weight for his peace of mind, and of being offered a drink of the glass the Russian holds in his hand.

The dry desert of his throat is eased by the water where his nerves remain stretched far too thin with the way the two of them watch him. With, too, the dark bruising he catches sight of on his own wrists in thick, matching bands in his skin. He answers the German's soft questions as to the state of his head, his stomach, the clarity of his vision and the ease of his breathing, with a distraction as he focuses on the sight of his wrist, but returns to the present enough to forestall any questions about his mental state just yet.

When he mentions the headache Peril disappears a moment, only to return with two pills in hand to offer out to him with careful, almost gentle tone of voice with his explanation of how they might help. The other man's eyes are their familiar stormy blue, but steady where he finds that Gaby's are anything but. He notices after a moment that the woman avoids meeting his eyes and instead spends altogether too much time putting away the stethoscope and straightening the pillows behind him. That, paired with the way Peril keeps looking at her as if she is miles out of his reach and yet near enough to touch, is less than encouraging.

Once he has finished the glass of water, having taken it from Peril's grip with an insistence the Russian had not seen fit to argue with, he finally asks the question that stands at the forefront of his mind.

The answer is lengthy. It is even less encouraging than the way Gaby refuses to look directly at him.


	4. Chapter 4

Electricity, it seems, was not to blame.

Or, rather, not wholly to blame.

His heart seems to have lodged itself in his throat while Gaby explains in quiet, halting words that while those who had held him had planned to make use of a car battery and an unpleasant number of cables, it had not worked. Had not worked to plan, anyway.

It had not been the electricity.

It had been the chair.

Her words skate past details of the interrogation of the men, of how she and Peril had learned what had happened while her fingers had fumbled at his straps and the two of them had worked to get him free. Peril had extracted, she had released. He doesn't press on the memories he doesn't have more than shreds of. Of the whimpers and wheezing breaths of those who had tried to take information he wouldn't share. Of Peril's anger and that wide-eyed expression of shock at seeing his partner bound again to a chair. Nor of Gaby's bared teeth and too ready boots aimed for ribs and softer targets of those nearest her before she had returned to her task of peeling away leather and cable and easing him out of the chair with the Russian's help.

He cannot quite swallow as she speaks of memory and of echoes. The car battery had been drained before it had given him more than the smallest shock. Weaker than static electricity. But there had been the chair and the bindings lashed around his wrists and ankles and forehead and...

The sedatives that hung heavy in his veins and tossed and twisted his stomach had been given to him in a rush. An attempt to stave off the panic that had had him lunging against his restraints like some feral animal. But they had been incompetent there too and had given him more than they should've. He had gone down too hard and left with too much in his system to give them anything.

His head swims with the implications of it. His heart migrates from his throat to his ears to drown out the strained sound of Gaby's voice and the quiet, cautious way Peril watches him. Panic and not panic both, and he cannot breathe. Cannot even hear the woman explain the reason for the side effects that linger in him then, or the signs they were carefully monitoring to be certain they do not grow worse. 

Blackness begins to encroach on the edges of the vision before he can so much as recognize the shame of such weakness, but it-

Suddenly it stills. With a touch. With a calm, slow-metered voice in his ear guiding him back. The pressure at his left wrist is broad and steady. That at his right is more delicate and tremulous. Neither presses into the already dark bruises but instead lay just above them. He breathes in deep gasps until it becomes easier. Until there is air enough that his vision begins to clear.

They are here. They will be here.


	5. Chapter 5

Sleep is a weight. Heavy, impossibly heavy over him like the invisible hand of a giant laid over his chest and pressing, pressing down. It should crush him, but doesn't. What it does is ache. Pulls at him tight in strips that bind themselves around his chest, his hips. Then more, the sensation spreads to lash down his wrists, his ankles, around his temples and across his forehead like some demented crown as he's pulled, dragged back against a bar laid against the base of his skull.

Comfort bleeds away on the memory of nightmare and reality too close to have faded with the distance of time, and he begins to fight it.

He comes up gasping. First for air and then, when his limbs flail free in spite of the certainty of leather straps, in a sharp slash of agony as forgotten injuries make themselves known once more. He hisses through gritted teeth in the absence of breath enough to groan. There isn't room enough to settle before a hand reaches out for him, hesitant fingers curving around his bicep and it's only the edge of callous to those delicate fingertips that keep him from flinching at the touch. Shoving himself bodily away.

The darkness does not part or break for the familiarity of that touch, but its weight lifts from him so he can breathe. Another hand comes up to rest on his jaw, and where innuendo wants to edge his tongue, the words fail him as he finds himself leaning forward. There's light when he blinks enough to adjust to it. Just there, dimmed and small on the table beside the bed. A halo of yellow light in the vastness of dark, and as one of his hands lifts to catch the small wrist attached to the hand on his jaw, he neither draws away nor invites her nearness further.

Simply holds her there. Holds himself in her touch.

Her fingers squeeze at his bicep; a reflexive action he recognizes is meant to reassure one of them. He cannot say which. A breath is released, near enough he can feel the exhale against his shoulder as well as hear the edges of...despair? Grief? Relief? He does not know.

Still, he allows her to coax him back down to the sheet, the pillow. There are no straps, no needles, the taste of copper not coating his mouth or sliding down the back of his throat. What there is is the tremor faint in her touch, as if a grip too ungentle might shatter him, but strange amusement licks through him at the thought that she did not, at least, handle him like a carburetor, an intake manifold.

It is not desire that draws him onward in his action, the question of whether she would stay asked on the edge of silence, but an emotion he is allowed by the darkness. One edged and hollowed in fear. It eases with the weight of her settling on the bed beside him. He rearranges his limbs to allow her to fit in against him, a hiccup of hesitation all that shows before her head rests against his chest and her hand slips from his jaw to splay out over the beat of his heart.

He breathes his thanks against her hair as he slips back into sleep, but not before he hears her breath hitch or feels the first tear seep into his shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incredibly late though it is, I honestly wasn't expecting to find another chapter to add after so long. And yet, here we are with more feeling as if it needs to be said.
> 
> I wanted to thank everyone thus far that has added kudos or comments, I really appreciate all the love this has gotten. So here's hoping for more to be continued.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their much-delayed heart to heart (or how Napoleon Solo deals with sincerity)

He wakes in the muted quiet of late morning, shreds of his nightmares on his tongue.

_There was once a little boy-_

The bed beside him is cool, his arms empty of the small shape of her.

It is hardly the first time he has woken alone, although he can reflect with a spot of masculine pride that it was rare he couldn’t coax a bedmate into lingering with him awhile longer. But there is something of a sting to it then he would much rather not reflect on.

Or, at least, there is until she walks into the room. As he watches, she carries in a tray laden with toast and a few pots of what he suspects are jams and butter, if there’s anything of her German habits to it. There is a mug as well, but he is more concerned with watching her face as she walks over to him and sets it on the bed beside him, setting herself down on the edge of the bed with equal care.

Her eyes are downcast, her face turned away from him as she lays her hands in her lap.

He knows her well enough by now to know she is collecting what words she wants to use, putting together her thoughts as well as finding the right way to express them in a language that is not the first on her tongue. He presses himself up into a sitting position in this emptiness of speech, trying not to wince too obviously at the pull and creak of his muscles the action causes, and leans back against the headboard with every appearance of ease.

While his eyes remain on her, he does take the time to reach for the mug of coffee steaming beside the plate of perfectly golden toast. He smirks only a little to see that it has been made exactly how he likes it, although he knows her well enough to take a sip before he says something on the matter.

“I’m sorry,” she says, when she finally speaks. She turns to look at him only once the words are out, but he can see the way her fingers pluck at her dress while they are half off her tongue. There is sincerity enough in her eyes when she does look at him. More than that in her voice when she reaches out to lay a hand over his on the blanket and repeats her words, “I am so sorry, Solo.”

“I do not know what you mean,” he tells her, and where he slips in a touch of flirtation into the words it’s more in habit than in any desire to follow through on them. At least just then, even feeling as if he were hit by a truck, he can admire the beauty of her in the soft morning light.

He is about to suggest the coffee is not _that_ bad before she stops him, a steeliness in every line of her despite the curve of her shoulders and the gentle touch of her calloused fingers on his. But even that fades and she is uncertain and clearly working against her own habits of prickliness that have served her so well in just surviving these past years. “I knew what would happen, and still I-”

It’s not a habit of his to be audience to such emotion, and in this uncomfortable space of sincerity and knowing and the fragile trust between them, he turns his hand in hers to give her a gentle squeeze. Where she has stumbled over her own tongue, he smiles. Soft, and more honest than he has gifted her on most occasions. “Don’t be,” he tells her. “You did what you had to do. Not even Peril could have held that against you.”

He grins at her a touch more rakishly so she will understand that while he appreciates her concern, he has no desire to linger on it a second longer.

He brings her hand up to his mouth to press a kiss to her knuckles, laughing already when she rolls her eyes at him and steals her hand away for the gesture, because he needs to see the sadness wiped from her eyes. Needs a return to their equilibrium built of flirtation and exasperation before the pang in his gut settles and he has to think too long of what he has done in the course of his own career.

She steals a slice of his toast and lets herself be drawn into a conversation about one thing or another, and the warmth that settles over him is never more honest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly never expected to finish this piece, as long as it has been, but I cannot say how much I have loved writing it. Thank you so much for reading, and whether you comment or not, give kudos or not, like it or not, know that the appreciation I have received thus far has been a fantastic addition to my days.


End file.
